


Change of Heart

by Zara



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Multi, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-10
Updated: 2012-08-10
Packaged: 2017-11-11 20:07:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/482418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zara/pseuds/Zara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arya and Gendry watch Bran and Meera’s twins. Afterwards, Gendry mentions to Arya that he wants children of his own. Arya objects to this idea. Initially.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Change of Heart

**Author's Note:**

> So this was just an idea I had in mind but I was bored and the archive's been slow for the past week so I thought, why the hell not? and this was supposed to be FUN and SMUTTY but it turns out I have a lot of feelings.
> 
> Also I'd say Arya is 22 and Gendry is 27, at the beginning.

“Gendry…Gendry he’s dripping on me.”

The raven-haired blacksmith rolls his eyes at his little wife. Arya sits on the wooden floors of the nursery, holding Bran and Meera’s son at an arm’s distance as he gurgles and a long string of saliva drops onto her breeches.

“I do believe that’s what babes do.” He replies, adjusting Rayna in his lap.

Meera’s been spending all of her time taking care of the babes. In a fit of exhaustion and taking advantage of Gendry and Arya’s temporary settlement in Winterfell, she convinces the two of them to watch over the twins as she and Bran spend the day together.

The babes are barely two years old, and little Ben and Rayna could not be more different. Ben is wild—always laughing and, evidently, crooning wetly, pulling on Arya’s plaited hair and staining her clothing. Rayna, however, is quieter. She sits on Gendry’s knee and plays with her doll, brushing back the sinewy hair of yarn and thread with a small smile, her auburn waves hiding her face. 

Arya wrinkles her nose at Ben’s half-toothed smile and places him on the ground, letting him crawl toward the soft little wolf that Old Nan—bless that woman for still living—had threaded together for him. 

“He’s like Rickon, when he was a babe.” She says, and her eyes soften. “He was as wild as a babe as he is now a king.”

Gendry smiles but says nothing, knowing that Arya was reminiscing her childhood in her mind; of her mother and father and baby Rickon. Once in a while, she tells him of her family before… _just before_ , she would say, _before the darkness came_.

“Shireen is to have her child any day now.” Gendry states as he watches Ben pull at Arya’s hair. He smiles at her grimace, at how she doesn’t pull him off this time, with longing. 

“She thinks it’s a son; wants to name him Willem.” Arya replies; and Ben wraps his small fingers around her thumb. She looks up at Gendry and smirks. “It’s a strong Stark name. I thought she’d pick something more southron, but it seems Shireen’s adapted much of the North in her time here.”

Gendry fiddles with Rayna’s hair, like a child, like Ben, but not. “She is afraid.”

Arya nods. “She fears the babe will get greyscale, too.”

He feels Rayna swaying on his knee, and knows she’s falling asleep. He looks down at her and sighs; _my niece_ , he thinks, _though not by blood_. Shireen’s child will be different. Shireen’s child will be his blood, too. There is also Edric’s son, Darryn, in Storm’s End. 

Gendry hopes—though he knows it’s maybe a bit foolish—that perhaps he and Arya would have children of their own, soon enough. It’s been on his mind for quite some time, and has brought it up to Arya only once. They’ve traveled all over Westeros together, and were in Highgarden when he had told her so. She was silent until she firmly voiced her refusal. Hurt, he didn’t speak to her for the rest of the day, until the night when she slipped her little hand into his breeches.

That night, he fucked her on the plush featherbed in the guest chambers given to them by her sister and Lord Willas. Then he watched her drink her moon tea and, with a bit of a sunken heart, never mentioned it again.

Gendry musters up his courage now, though. Seeing her with Bran and Meera’s babes only triggers a buried desire in his heart. He does not want to force her, and would never do anything against her will, no matter what he wants. But he hopes that, in time, she would too possess a desire for children. At this moment in time though, it seems she does not.  
“Not fair,” Arya mumbles, seeing Rayna now asleep in his lap. She moves Ben onto her shoulders. “Why can’t this one fall asleep too?”

“Arya…” He begins nervously. “Do you…do you think—”

“No.” She interrupts. She looks at him, and he flinches. “Gendry, we discussed this before. I don’t want children. I can’t be a mother.”

He sighs. “Why not?”

“That’s not important.” She snaps. “What’s important is that I don’t _want_ to.”

“Arya, please, just think about it for a moment.”

“No.” She glares. “There are so many other children, Sansa’s, Meera’s, Willow and Edric’s, and Shireen is about to pop one out too. They’re plenty.”

“Yes,” Gendry responds. “But they're not ours.”

Arya sighs.

He rubs a hand over his face. “I want…I want sons and daughters that look like us…like _you_ ; our own children that we’ll have forever. We could be a real family. We could stop moving around so much…find one place and stay there and raise them.”

He does not want to say it, and he never would say it, but Gendry’s desire for children springs from his own lack of a father as well as his brief time with his mother. He had no siblings growing up, either. He never had a family. If he and Arya had children, he could be the ideal father. 

“I would be an awful mother.” She says.

Gendry shakes his head. “You would be a perfect mother.”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

He says nothing. They both sit in silence, with Rayna asleep and Ben sitting in Arya’s lap playing with toys, for only a short while when Meera arrives and picks up her son with a cheerful laugh. Bran wheels himself into the room, and takes Rayna to his lap, holding her against his chest and wrapping her small arms around his shoulders. They both thank them. Arya walks ahead of him to the forge.

\---

They stay in the room above the forge, and Gendry is wrapped in furs and alone on the bed as Arya pulls off her boots and breeches. His back is to her, and he tries to sleep, but he can’t. He feels the bed sink only slightly when she sits and, with a vague ruffle, she is leaning over him and placing hot, wet kisses down his neck. 

Arousal stirs in his core, and he doesn’t want to succumb to her but he does, he always does. As he lies on his back and her lips mold with his, he thinks that they have been here before, and it will end the same way.

 _So be it_ , he thinks. Perhaps she will be ready another time, or perhaps she never will be. Either way, he knows he will accept it, in the end. 

He opens his mouth and lets her explore with her tongue. As they kiss, he pulls at her large tunic, pleased when he feels that she wears no smallclothes underneath. His hands slide to her breasts, small, but soft, and massage them gently. He removes the tunic completely, disconnecting their lips for barely a second, and she works at unlacing his breeches.

He sucks on her breasts before she pushes him down, and that night she rides him passionately, painfully, beautifully. They finish and lay together, panting, for only a while before she pulls him over her and he fucks her deep into the straw mattress, biting into her shoulder.

Afterwards she gets up, naked, and pulls out the little mesh bag of leaves for her moon tea. He leans back against the bed and watches her as she stares at it, twisting it and playing with it for a moment. She bites her lip, flips it in her hands, and sighs. She tucks the bag of leaves into the pouch of her leather sack and comes to lie next to him.  
She tucks herself under his arm and kisses his chest. “If I become a horrid mother, it’ll be your fault.”

\---

She does not grow with child immediately. They lie together a few more times for a few more nights before Arya actually begins to feel changes in her body. And when she does and she tells him, he grins so wide and lifts her up and spins her around and she kisses him.

The year Arya is with child is an eventful year. 

Shireen gives birth to little Willem Stark. Rickon is ecstatic to see that the boy has a tuft of black hair and dark Tully blue eyes, and Shireen is pleased to see that he is completely healthy. Additionally, Shireen is required to remain in bed, for her labour was rough and she is weak, and Arya and Gendry try to visit her and Willem as much as they can so that she does not grow bored with handmaidens and wet-nurses.

When Arya is five moons along, they also receive two ravens—one from Edric, another from Sansa. Edric’s letter states that Willow is pregnant with her second child. Sansa’s letter states that she has given birth to her third child, Alysanne Tyrell. Arya wants to visit her sister, and Gendry promises that they will go to Highgarden once their own babe is born.  
One night Gendry thinks about their unborn child as Arya’s asleep beside him. Its surname would be Waters, and in this moment he thinks that maybe he should have accepted all his offers of legitimization. If he listened to his uncle Stannis, or King Aegon, or the lady Daenerys, his child could be a true Baratheon.

But the name was to be taken with the duties of a lord, and the life of a lord was not for him. Edric held that position well. Besides, Arya made it clear that she loves him for the bastard blacksmith he already is. 

Arya is seven moons along when her direwolf begins to whimper. Nymeria barely moves and does not eat or drink. Arya worries for her, struggling to bend down with her swelling belly so that she could stroke her grey fur.

It is only a few weeks later that Nymeria passes.

Arya sobs into his chest when it happens. She sobs for the entire night, and he simply holds her and strokes her hair as she cries for a friend.

Arya’s labour is torturous and seemingly endless. Rickon and Shireen insist that she give birth in the castle, and she lies on a bed in one of the guest chambers with maesters and handmaidens and Gendry at her side. She tries her hardest not to scream or cry when she pushes out the babe, although he could feel her pain in the way she grips his fingers. For hours, she lies there. But once they hear a high-pitched scream, Arya smiles, breathless and wild and beautiful. He kisses her forehead.

The maester cleans the babe and wraps it before placing it in Arya’s arms. “A strong and healthy babe, my lady. It is a girl.”

“She’s perfect.” Arya whispers. She smiles tiredly at Gendry. 

“You should name her.” He says. “It should be you who does it.”

The babe coos and stirs in the blankets she’s wrapped in. Arya holds her closer and whispers a name. Gendry grins, kissing her, then kissing their daughter, Nymeria. Nymeria Waters.

\---

They are both pleased when their girl grows to have Gendry’s dark hair and Arya’s steel irises. She is a fierce little child, a feminine warrior. At two, she holds a doll from her aunt Sansa. At four, she holds her little brother, Elyan, and plays with her cousins, including Rickon and Shireen’s new daughter, Olethea. At five, she holds a small wooden dagger carved for her by her father. She is sneaky as her mother, stubborn as her father, and possesses an insatiable amount of energy. 

One night, Arya finishes tucking in Elyan, after a struggle to get him to bed. Nymeria is asleep. Gendry lies on his back and grins at his wife. She tucks herself under his arm the way she always does, and in her ear he whispers, “I told you you’d be a perfect mother.”

“Yeah, yeah,” She mumbles into his shoulder. “That’s it, though. No more. Two is enough.”

“Fine, then.” He replies, and he kisses her, lays with her, and it isn’t until a week later that Arya realizes she hasn’t drank her moon tea in quite some time. He’s in the forge, Nymeria is six and is waving around her wooden sword, Elyan is three, and playing with a carved toy-set in the corner, and Arya comes in and smacks his chest with a lethal glare.

 

Nine moons later their son, their third (and final) child, is born. In a state of recall and a moment of tears, he is named Ned.


End file.
